Unknown os-2

by Rachel Caine

  “Got to pat you down for weapons,” the detective said. “And if you resist, I’ll Taser your fine albino ass and haul you to the county jail. Is that clear?”

  “Oh man,” Luis sighed. “Just roll with it, okay?”

  I supposed he meant that for me. I wasn’t quite certain what he wanted me to do, but I gathered, from the way he caught and held my eyes, that he wanted me to do nothing.

  So, with a great deal of distaste, I allowed the stranger to put his hands on me, moving up my sides, across my back, down my legs and back up between them. Calm, I told myself. Remain calm. That was a great deal harder than I’d expected, but by continuing to stare hard into Luis’s wide, dark eyes, I found a certain measure of balance.

  The detective stepped back. “She’s clean. Okay, your turn, Rocha.”

  Luis smiled, very much as if he was used to this sort of treatment. “No problem. I know you enjoy this kind of thing.”

  That drove whatever good humor there had been in the stranger completely away, and he slammed Luis forward with the bar of his forearm against Luis’s back, crushing him against the hood of the pickup truck.

  I leaned back, taking my weight off the balls of my feet, and said, “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Shut up, punk,” the older, broader man said. “Hands on the hood. Hands on the hood!”

  “Why?” I didn’t comply. As much as I hated being touched and treated with contempt, my fury was well and truly ignited now not for myself, but for Luis. The shorter man was slapping his hand down Luis’s sides and legs with more violence than he’d shown me. “What have we done?”

  “You think I need a reason to roust a Norteño asshole?” he shot back. “Think again.”

  “I’m not Norteño,” Luis gritted out, face still smashed against the truck. “Haven’t been for years. Better get a new playbook, detective.”

  “If you’re not Norteño, then why did the gang shoot up your brother and sister-in-law? Just for the fun of it?”

  “I left. They didn’t like it. I just got back in town. You can check it out.”

  The older man nodded to the younger, who let Luis go and stepped back. Luis got himself upright again and stepped back from the truck turning to face the two men. “What’s this about?” he asked.

  “You.” The older man pointed at me. “Name.”

  “Leslie Raine,” I said. It was as good as any, and I had Warden-produced identification to prove it was mine.

  “Where you from?”

  “Here.”

  “Yeah, you look like a fucking native.” He dismissed me and turned back to Luis. “What are you doing hanging around the Federal Building?”

  “I’m not hanging around,” Luis said. “We just came from seeing the FBI. Special Agent Turner. He’ll verify that.”

  The two men exchanged a fast, unreadable look. “How’s an asshole like you rate time with a fed?”

  “It’s not your business,” I said, with all the cold hauteur an eternity of being immortal had taught me.

  That got me a longer appraisal from both men. “So what are you, some kind of a fed? Rocha’s some kind of informant?”

  I smiled, slowly. “Do you really want to talk about this here? In the open?”

  On the street, people were slowing down in cars to stare at us; in a storefront opposite, someone stood still, taking a photograph with his cell phone. I sent a pulse of power over the distance between us, squeezing metal and glass, and the phone gave a sad little electronic pop and died. The man frowned at his dead device and shook it impotently, as if he could shake life back into it. Then, seeing my expression, he quickly moved on.

  I don’t like it when people stare.

  Whether the two policemen believed me or not, they opted for caution. The older one nodded, and the younger one walked to an anonymous gray sedan nearby and opened the back door. “Inside,” he said.

  “Are we under arrest?”

  “Why? You got something we ought to arrest you for?”

  I shrugged and got into the car. Luis took the opposite side, and the two doors thumped closed as the policemen moved to the front. Immediately, I began to feel constricted. This car was not as fragrant as most, but it was still deeply unpleasant, redolent of plastic, hot metal, unwashed flesh, and old food. I studied the interior door. There were no release handles; however, I comforted myself that this would hardly slow either of us down, should we choose to leave. Earth Wardens are not easily caged; Djinn, no matter how humiliated and cast out, even less so. But there are disadvantages to having such powers; for one thing, one cannot always find a useful way to apply them.

  As now.

  The policemen entered the car. It was warm inside, though not oppressively so; still, I felt stifled, and panic rose inside me. I closed my eyes tightly and concentrated on breathing, pushing air in and out of my fragile lungs, trying not to imagine what it might be like to be robbed of air, of breath.

  “Hey, what’s wrong with your friend?” the smaller detective asked. I didn’t open my eyes. “You ain’t gonna puke, are you? If you do, you’re cleaning it up.”

  “She doesn’t like cars,” Luis said. “Especially ones that stink like last night’s drunk tank. Now that we’re away from prying ears, what the hell do you want?”

  The larger detective turned around, arm over the back of the seat, and said, “You’re an Earth Warden, right?”

  I opened my eyes for that. Luis didn’t react in the slightest, not even by a change in his heart rate or respiration. “No idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “I do environmental work. Big business these days, you know? Thinking green and all that.”

  “Don’t bullshit me. You’re a Warden.”

  Luis didn’t say anything, just watched him. The big man finally sighed and ran a square hand over his face.

  “I know all about it,” he said. “Shit, you people made a big freaking splash all over the television, remember? Besides, my sister-in-law’s one of them Weather Wardens. Beatrice Halley. Works out of Chicago, does stuff with the lakes up there.”

  Luis sat back a little. “I know Bea Halley,” he said.

  “You must be Frank Halley. She said her brother- in-law was a cop.”

  “Yeah, well, she don’t like me much, and the feeling’s mutual, but whatever. This ain’t about that.”

  “So what is it about?”

  “I got a job for you,” Halley said. “Sick kid.”

  A shadow passed over Luis’s face. I knew he hated saying no to people, but at the same time, Earth Wardens didn’t normally agree to healing for the general public. It was harsh, but necessary; if word got out about what they could do, it would bring an endless stream of sufferers to their doorsteps, and it would prevent them from carrying out their larger duties.

  “I know it’s not normal,” Halley said, “but this kid’s kind of special. She showed up half starved, dehydrated, with a nasty case of infection; no family, no missing kid bulletin out on her. She’s about five years old.”

  Hope flared hot in Luis’s eyes, and I know it must have registered in my expression as well. “No name?”

  “She’s too sick to talk.”

  Halley was, I believed, deliberately vague as to details. He was allowing Luis’s desperation to fill in information.

  I thought I understood why. “This girl,” I said. “She is not Isabel Rocha. You wish us to think she could be, to bring Luis face-to-face with her. You believe he could not refuse once he saw her, even if she isn’t his niece.”

  Halley and his partner stared at me. I didn’t blink.

  “Yeah,” Halley finally said. “That’s true. Look, the kid’s in bad shape. They’ve tried all the treatments, even the IV antibiotics. She’s dying. I figure you’re about the only shot she’s got left, unless Saint Joseph works a miracle.” He paused, studying Luis. “You a religious man?”

  “I been to mass a time or two.” He was, in fact, much more religious than that; I’d heard him
praying, from time to time, that we would find Isabel. Or avenge her. “Why?”

  Halley shrugged. “Always wondered is all. You Wardens, you’re practically gods, what with all the slinging lightning bolts and healing the sick. Bea ain’t religious. So I just wondered.”

  “We’re not any kind of gods, big G or small,” Luis said. “Ain’t even angels, man. We’re just people. Smart Wardens know that better than anybody. You play God, people die.”

  Halley looked like he wanted to keep on talking, but I broke in to say, “If the girl is as sick as you say, we shouldn’t waste time.”

  Both policemen looked startled, although they covered it quickly. “So you’ll go?” Halley asked, and started the car’s engine.

  “Of course he’ll go,” I said, without so much as a glance at Luis. The bond between us was strong enough that I had no doubts of it; I wouldn’t have doubted it in any case, because it was exactly the sort of thing Luis would do, whether or not it was wise. “You should have just asked.”

  Halley rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Shoulda thought of that.”

  The girl was in the hospital. I had never visited one before, although of course I knew the theory; there had been no need, when Manny and Angela were shot, because their wounds had been immediately fatal. If they had been taken to the hospital—and I supposed that they might have been—they would not have been placed in one of these complicated beds, hooked to machines, reduced to a limp, suffering sack of dying meat.

  I did not like the hospital.

  The child was so small. Smaller than Isabel, and nothing at all like her in coloring: blond, rosy pink skin, a delicate rosebud mouth. I could not see the color of her eyes; she was deeply unconscious.

  Parts of her body were deeply discolored and bruised. The infection Detective Halley had mentioned, but not a violent attack. This child was thin, ill-looked-after, but her fight was against a much more ruthless enemy.

  The room stank of death. I paused at the door, swallowing convulsively, and Halley came to a stop with me.

  “Sad,” he said. “Right?”

  I didn’t answer. I watched Luis. He entered the sterile room in slow, deliberate steps, as if he was afraid he might frighten the child, who surely could not have known he was there. He was, by contrast to her tiny body, a large man, well muscled, heavily tattooed, and it struck me as I watched that a human chancing on this scene would have assumed Luis to be a criminal, intent on harming the child.

  Until they saw his face, his eyes, the heartbreakingly gentle way he laid the back of his hand on the girl’s forehead and settled his weight on the bed beside her. He had large hands, but his fingers stroked gently through her hair, as if she might feel the comfort he offered.

  “Cass,” he said. “I need you.”

  He looked up into my eyes, and I felt it like a physical shock—a demand, but a kind one, with good intention behind it.

  And more. More than that. A complicated mixture of need and desire, dread and worry. For a disorienting moment, I saw myself through his eyes: tall, pale, expressionless, and apparently free of all connection to the human world.

  Apparently.

  I was abruptly conscious of my body, all the complex and fascinating parts of it; I felt the chilled air of the room moving over my skin, and felt gooseflesh gather. My heart pounded harder, altering its rhythm. My mouth felt dry, and without conscious decision, I stepped forward, first one foot, then another, until I was standing across the child’s bed from Luis Rocha.

  He held out his right hand, keeping his left in gentle contact with the girl’s forehead. My fingers closed over his, and the raw tactile pleasure of it took my breath away. I felt a tingle of power pulse through the link between us, and then through him. I touched the wellspring of power hidden deep in the Earth herself—slow, silent, strong power. The feel of it coursing through my nerves, through Luis’s, was enough to send my memories sparking to other times, other places, other lives. I had never been human, but I had been Djinn a very, very long time, and this, this feeling of touching the eternal . . .

  I let out a shaky sigh, almost a moan, and began to refine the power, shape it, form it into a golden flood that Luis used his human expertise to direct into the child’s fragile body. This was a thing some Djinn could do, and others could not; I had never been very interested in healing, but I found myself fascinated with the gentle precision with which he worked. It was all out of proportion to his physical appearance, his intimidating aspect.

  I found that pleasing.

  Luis worked with great concentration, and it took a very long time—hours, in fact. The policemen left, returned, and left again. Doctors and nurses came and went, but no one bothered us; I wondered why, until I realized that there must have been some common consent that this last effort would be tolerated. There was no harm in it.

  The mottled stains beneath her skin gradually began to fade. Luis stopped for a few moments then, gasping for breath, and I poured him a glass of water from the carafe standing next to the bed. He drank it in two convulsive gulps, and I realized that his shirt was dark with sweat, and his hair was dripping with it. His muscles trembled with the strain.

  I put a pale, dry hand on his moist arm, over the flame-shaped tattoo, and said, “It’s enough.”

  “No,” Luis said, and held out his glass for another pour from the carafe. “It’s still in her blood. Tough little buggers, but I’m getting them. I’ve got her major organs cleaned, but if I don’t kill it in her bloodstream, she’ll re-infect.” He paused to drink again—three gulps, this time. “You got enough to keep going?”

  Did I? The question surprised me, and I quickly turned my appraisal back on myself. I was unused, still, to human limits, but he was right; my body was trembling, robbed of energy, and I was burningly thirsty.

  I took the glass from him, refilled it, and downed it in two convulsive swallows. “I’m fine,” I said.

  He took the carafe, shook it, and then shrugged and upended it to drink the last few mouthfuls, depositing it back on the table, empty. “Then let’s do it.”

  I held on to his arm. “Luis.” I didn’t need to say more, and he didn’t need to do more than shake his head to reject my concern. “Very well,” I said.

  My fingers felt burned when they left his skin; he was warm, so warm it felt wrong to me. Effort and power, consuming him from within.

  He would not stop. I understood that very well.

  It took the rest of the afternoon, and the sun was slipping below the horizon when Luis finally sighed, removed his hand from the girl’s forehead, and tried to get up. Tried, and failed. I grabbed his arm as he began to slide off the bed; I couldn’t hold him, but I broke his momentum from a fall to a controlled slide to a sitting position on the floor. Someone had refilled the water pitcher, and I grabbed it and moved around the bed toward him. My legs trembled violently, and I had to stop and brace myself against the wall for a moment as dark spots swam and drifted in my eyes. I then summoned up all the energy left in me to drop down next to Luis’s side.

  I didn’t spill the water.

  “You okay?” he asked me in a faint, rough voice. I handed him the carafe, and he guzzled down more than half its contents without a pause. “We need food. Protein and carbs, the more the better.”

  I took the water from him and finished it before asking, in a voice I hardly recognized as my own, “The girl?”

  Luis gave me a slow, exhausted smile. “She’ll be okay,” he said. The smile, warm and sweet, faded too quickly. “Physically, anyway. No idea what happened to bring her to this. Could be too bad to get over it as easily as this.”

  If this had been easy, I could not imagine hard. I started to get up, but my legs wouldn’t respond. Luis took my hand.

  I tried to pull away, but even in his weakened state, Luis was a strong man. “No,” I said. “You’ve spent too much power already.”

  “You need it more than I do right now.” His last reserves of power cascaded into me, flood
ing warm through my nerves, sparking waves of pleasure as it passed. An echo only—he had little to give me, but it was enough to sustain me for another day, perhaps two, until he recovered.

  If I didn’t use my power recklessly.

  I didn’t mean to do it, but my hand seemed to move of its own volition, breaking away from his grip and moving up to touch his face.

  Luis’s eyes widened, and for an instant we were staring at each other with all the doors open, all the walls thrown down.

  Then I dropped my hand, dragged myself to my feet, and walked off in search of the proteins and carbohydrates his body so desperately needed to replace. I met Detective Halley in the hall heading toward the room, laden with a tray full of food. Hamburgers, hot dogs, some sort of stew in a bowl.

  “She going to make it?” Halley asked, holding on to the tray.

  “Are you withholding food from us if she doesn’t?”

  He blinked, shook his head, and handed the food to me. “You tried. Can’t ask more than that, I guess.”

  “Then I am pleased to tell you that Luis believes she will recover.” I started to take the food into the room, then turned back to him and asked, “How did you know?”

  “Know what?”

  “That we would need this.”

  He shrugged. “I asked my sister- in-law. She said if you made it through, you’d be hungry as a cloud of locusts.”

  Halley, I decided, would be allowed to live after all.

  The girl woke up after a deep, but natural, sleep. That was not significant.

  What was significant was how she woke up . . . crying, screaming, panicked, and desperate.

  Her distress set the room on fire.

  It happened very quickly—one moment the child was shrieking in terror, and the next, the bedding around her burst into hot orange flames. So did the cushions on the chairs nearby, and the cheerful yellow curtains draping the windows. Colorful characters charred on the walls.

  This was the worst thing that could happen. Luis’s powers were focused around Earth; a Weather Warden could have found ways to shut down this sort of event, but for an Earth Warden it was much more difficult.